


My Ghosts Don't Know My Name

by Godtiss



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Ghosts, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Godtiss/pseuds/Godtiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seeing isn't necessarily believing. Not in John's case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Ghosts Don't Know My Name

John has seen ghosts before.

The first time a man died beneath his hands, blood staining the desert sand a garish red, John had gone weeks where Edward Banks still walked through their small base. He’d seen the man sit with his friends, go through the motions of life as though he were alive – except he never laughed, never smiled, never spoke.

John had seen Banks crouching under the midday sun, the enemy fire echoing around him and he was hit again, and John still couldn’t save him.

The soldier died a dozen deaths before John stopped seeing him everywhere, out of the corner of his eye.

Years later, John shoots a cabbie in London. The man appears in 221b Baker Street, and John is only sure it’s a hallucination when Sherlock doesn’t react.

The cabbie disappears after three days. John finally sleeps without the feel of those condemning eyes watching him, but the nightmares still feel real enough and he wakes expecting to see the man standing silently at the end of his bed, sneering.

John sees Sherlock’s ghost twice.

The first is mere hours after the detective’s death. John is back in Baker Street despite the fact that he would rather be anywhere else except there’s nowhere for him to go. There’s a cup of untouched tea on the table and Sherlock’s violin lies on his chair where he left it and John is curled up on the couch, staring blankly at the smiley face on the wall.

Sherlock kneels beside him, just out of reach. His eyes are regretful. He is silent, save for the words reverberating through John’s skull. _I’m a fake. Goodbye, John._

John turns away, buries his face in the cushions and tries to breath past the lump lodged in his throat.

When he wakes the next morning, Sherlock is gone. John doesn’t see another ghost for three years, until suddenly Sherlock is standing in the doorway. Thinner, hair cut short, and he looks older.

John didn’t think ghosts changed.

And then Sherlock says his name, a broken sound that is more of a hoarse whisper than an actual word, and John’s confusion grows because ghosts were always silent. Except Sherlock makes it sound as though there was still air in those lungs.

Sherlock takes a step forward and his eyes are the same as his ghost – regretful, sorrowful, longing – and John doesn’t know anything anymore until Sherlock reaches out, the pad of his thumb brushing John’s cheek and John knows that ghosts aren’t solid or warm or so filled with life that he imagines he can hear the other’s heartbeat echoing through the room, keeping pace with his own and matching it beat for beat.

“You’re real,” John says.


End file.
